Dreams Remembered

Chapter Six: War, Part Two

Chapter Six: War, Part Two

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Specific Dream Characteristics:

Full kinesthetic control.

Choice driven actions.

Realistic physics.

Time of day in perpetual flux.

Reoccurring.

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            We decided to attempt an escape. Sliding out of the southern facing door, we began our flight toward the mansion. About halfway to the house, about a mile, we began to hear the rumble of the trafficker’s Diesel engines. They were transporting the prisoners and headed directly toward us. Ducking into the bushes that lined the side of the road, we decided to wait till the convoy had passed, hoping not to be discovered.

            Suddenly, a van charged up the road from the south. The tires screeched as the van pulled sideways, blocking the road in front of the convoy. Ten men jumped out of the side doors and opened up fire at the oncoming convoy with AK-47s, Uzis, and other various machine guns. They were fighting back, trying to free the prisoners. With a distraction to protect us, we broke from cover and raced in a full sprint across the street and towards the mansion. There was no time to look back.

            We reached the sidewalk and tried to sprint up the bank and to the house. We were suddenly caught off guard by an attack as snipers from the second story of the house opened up fire at us. The bullets forced us to dive back and hide behind the embankment. Hunkered over, we continued on towards the crossroads, trying to keep from being shot by hugging close to the side.

            The sidewalk on the corner of the crossroads nearest to the mansion was built like an open square. It was thirty feet across with two 8-foot obelisk columns diagonally positioned from each other and perpendicular from the corner of the roads. They were both 3-foot-thick granite blocks that seemed to stand guard for the mansion.

            The embankment we hid against traveled along the road and turned from the crossroads to the formidable black tunnel. At the corner of the mansion property there were six massive Maple trees grown together to form a single, woven, horseshoe-shapedsanctuary.  It grew at the top of the slope and the entrance to the horseshoe faced the house. When we saw the trees, Shin and I dashed up the slope and ducked inside, avoiding the shots fired at us. Inside there was a godsend, and a horror.

            A small teenage boy sat at the base of the trunk across from the entrance. He was bleeding out of his mouth, silently crying, and staring at his entrails that were spilled out of his split open stomach. His eyes tried to fix his eyes on us, but with no success. Then he calmly spoke the words of a dead man between ragged breaths: “There are supplies here. Do your worst. Good luck.” He then slumped over on his side, dead.

            Tears were in our eyes as we turned to look around to the cavernous inside of the sanctuary we were in. There were muskets, hammers, screwdrivers, knives, axes, nails, grenades, ammunition, and other blunt instruments of death stacked against the natural wooden barrier that protected us. Shin grabbed three of the muskets, each with bayonets. I armed myself with two hammers and two screwdrivers, shoving them in my belt. Shin had begun to fire at the snipers in the mansion. He killed them. Every last one of them.

            As the last sniper crumpled with death in his position, we heard a violent explosion. We looked out to see flames engulf the van of the trafficker’s assailants. The fight turned against our favor as the freedom fighters were massacredwith machetes. Blood spurted from their necks and limbs, each fell sputtering and gasping their last. Then the convoy continued down the road towards us, traveling much slower than before. The militants were both inside the vehicles and walking alongside.